By Bud_the_Wiser - October 4, 2008, 3:10AM
As we face the worst job market since 9/11 and the worst housing market since....(1991 or the 1930s?), it's going to take a lot of work on economic policy to dig us out of this quagmire (which is where all Bush presidencies seem to leave America).
Others have likely commented here on this topic, but I got to thinking about who McCain and Obama have ready to deal with these problems, after reading this today from Krugman:
One thing’s for sure: The next administration’s economic team had better be ready to hit the ground running, because from day one it will find itself dealing with the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Perhaps it wasn't so surprising that, given the Obama campaign's great organizational skills, it was quite easy to find info on who is involved in Obama's economic decision making. Finding info on McCain's team took a lot more work.
For this latest financial crisis it is pretty clear who is getting better depth and expertise in their economic advice:
The Obama Financial Crisis Team
Warren Buffett, Paul O’Neill, Bob Rubin, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Dan Tarullo, Laura Tyson and Paul Volcker
So, that's:
3 former Treasury Secretaries (2 Dems, 1 Rep)
1 former Chairman of the Federal Reserve
1 former Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers
1 former Presidential Advisor for International Economic Policy
1 former Chief Economist of the World Bank
and, of course, the world’s most successful investor.
McCain's Economic Advisory Core
There has been scant info on any recent additions to McCain's advisory team, especially as far as who really is being consulted. This is a list of those with specific financial industry or monetary policy expertise who have been in the news as McCain advisors.
John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch,
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director,
Martin Feldstein, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan,
John Taylor, Stanford University professor and former Deputy Treasury Secretary,
Donald Luskin, chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics (who primarily has a background in options trading).
Holtz-Eakin is the main advisor and it seems that it his association that has brought in Taylor, who is one of the only higher profile advisors with finance/monetary policy expertise that I can find a report of actually having met with McCain recently. Another report also notes recent consultations with Feldstien and Carly Fiorina (whose background is Marketing, not Finance!?!?).
The only larger list of advisors I have found for McCain is one that dates as far back as last summer, but few of these names have appeared in the news.
Obama's Centrist Team is Well Respected
No less than the Weekly Standard has called the Obama team "Centrist."
Bloomberg also had a nice report on the core team doing a lot of the day-to-day grunt work putting policies together. They describe it as follows:
"Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team.
`Top-Notch Economists'
``They're all top-notch economists,'' said Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor and former chief White House economist for President George W. Bush. ``Their views are left of the political center, as one would expect, but only slightly.''
A trio of seasoned Washington hands bolsters the academics: Karen Kornbluh, policy director in Obama's Senate office; Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and a former senior economic adviser in the Clinton administration; and Michael Froman, the chief of staff for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who now works with his old boss at Citigroup Inc."
The full report is here.
McCain "Displays No Consistent Economic Principles"
The Weekly Standard also has a nice piece on McCain's economic team, circa February 2008. One of the most interesting observations about McCain is that:
"McCain's method in domestic matters no less than in foreign affairs is military: He surveys a set of facts, identifies a villain, fixes him with his steely gaze, and then goes after him...."
"What's unsettling is that you can never predict who the next bad guy will be. No consistent economic principles can be extracted from McCain's grab bag of policy positions, and no amount of textbook baloney about the free market, deregulation, and limited government will deter him from bringing his malefactors to justice. McCain's economics aren't ideological but improvisational--a campaign with shifting fronts, running on indignation."
McCain Campaign's Economic Advisory Team a Complete Failure
However the McCain camp has organized and utilized its economic advisory team, it is quite clear that the team has completely failed in keeping Candidate McCain up-to-date on the state of the economy and crafting his economic message and policies. McCain's revelation of his ignorance on the state of the economy on September 15th marks the point of collapse in his poll numbers and will likely mark the beginning of the end for McCain/Palin.
The team's failure to understand the health and direction of the economy was illustrated not only in McCain's line that, "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" but in the very words of one of his only advisors with private sector experience in the financial markets, Donald Luskin, who claimed on September 14th that:
"Things today just aren't that bad." And went on to claim that the most likely forecast is that "we're on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity."
With advisors like these is it any wonder that John McCain, by his very words and actions, is daily providing the evidence and argument for why he is completely unfit to be President of the United States?
For that effort, let me just say - as a former McCain '00 donor - Thank You John McCain!
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/obama-v-mccain-whos-got-the-at.php
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
